Transcript Chapter 15 Slide 15-1 Characteristics of the Situation Irwin/McGraw-Hill The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999

Chapter 15
Slide 15-1
Characteristics of the
Situation
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Chapter Goals
Slide 15-2
 The goal of this chapter is to simply
increase awareness of an aspect of
leadership that is very complex.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Historically
Slide 15-3
 Historically, researchers maintained that
the situation, not someone’s traits or
abilities, plays the most important role in
determining who emerges as a leader.
They also believed that leaders were made,
not born, and that prior leadership
experience helped forge effective leaders.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
More recently
Slide 15-4
 More recently, leadership theories have explored how
situational factors affect leaders’ behaviors. For
example, a leader’s behavior was said to be depend
on a leader’s perceptions of several critical aspects of
the situation: rules and regulations governing the
job; role expectations of subordinates, peers, and
superiors; the nature of the task; and feedback about
the subordinates’ performance.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
The Congruence Model is a
systems model with inputs,
processes, and outputs.
Slide 15-5
 Input, which consists of the environment,
resources, and history.
 Processes, which consist of the work, people,
formal organization, and informal organization.
 Output, which consists of the system, unit, and
individual.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Congruence Model
Slide 15-6
 The core of the Congruence Model
has four components: the work, the
people, the formal organizational, and
the informal organization.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
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Congruence Model
Slide 15-7
Cont.
 The work is “what is to be done” by the
organization and its component parts.
 The people refers to the leader and
followers and their skills, knowledge,
experience, expectations, needs and
preferences.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Congruence Model
Slide 15-8
Cont.
 The formal organization addresses how the level
of authority, organizational structure,
organizational design, lateral interdependence,
and organizational culture affect leaders’ and
followers’ behavior.
 The informal organization refers to its culture
(shared backgrounds, norms, values, or beliefs.)
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Environmental
characteristics
Slide 15-9
 Environmental characteristics concern
situational factors outside the task or
organization that still affect the leadership
process. These include technological,
economic, political, social, and legal
forces.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999
Summary
Slide 15-10
 Although leaders’ and followers’ behaviors are
affected by a variety of situational factors, all too
often leaders and followers completely overlook how
changing the situation can help them to change their
behavior. The most important point regarding
situational engineering is to get leaders and followers
to understand that the situation is not set in concrete,
and to think about how they can change the situation
in order for everyone to be more satisfied and
productive.
Irwin/McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. © 1999